16 Responses to “Monday Morning Poll”

Was Donald Regan elected president when I wasn’t looking? Was he promoted when Reagan was shot and killed outside that Hyatt and none of us noticed the switch? Kind of like the Darrens on Bewitched? Or Baker for Kinchloe on Hogan’s Heroes?

Just having some fun at your minor typo Radley. I love your Monday surveys.

I voted Reagan. I was hesitant about doing so, but Reagan is the only president that I am aware has ever referred to himself as a libertarian (even if with a qualifier – http://www.reason.com/news/show/29318.html). Carter, Ford and the Two Bushes don’t factor into this debate at all, IMHO.

I didn’t realize how poor our most recent presidents have been until I looked at the list and had to pick one. Clinton got my vote but it was more of a case of “the lesser of the evils” than a “wow was he good” vote.

Reagan? I’ve never understood the appeal of this dangerous idealogue, who presided over a deregulation-caused orgy of corruption and greed with the S&L scandal. And to the people who say “he made America feel good again”, I say, what the fuck is this, a country or a fucking support group for Stuart Smiley?

Reagan was an informant to J Edgar Hoover during the McCarthy era – he’d go to dinner parties and then inform on his friends who spoke out with “pinko” views. Hoover paid him back by supporting him when he ran for Governor of California. This has been extensively documented in the San Francisco Chronicle based on Freedom of Information requests.

Reagan was just another corrupt sell-out among many in the national socialist party of America.

Adam W. — Reagan certainly presided over a rampup of the drug war, but he didn’t start the ball rolling by any means. It started a LONG time ago and the major push for the “modern” version came from Nixon, ie. three prez’s before Ronnie, because he wanted to punish those “dirty hippies” that were taking to the streets against his policies.

Read “The Naked Truth About Drugs” by Daniel E. Williams. (Website is: thenakedtruthaboutdrugs.com.) It started in the early 20th century — when you could go to the Sears & Roebuck catalog and order a lovely morphine kit, complete with a couple vials of the stuff, a nice old skool glass hypodermic and a spif leather carrying case — because certain people looked around and noticed that a little over 1% of the populace were addicts and decided that “something must be done!” about this. Now, nearly a century later, with billions spent, countless lives (on both sides and freaking worldwide) ruined or lost, freedom in tatters and on and on we have… oh a little over 1% of the population who’re addicts.

Lastly, most everybody (including Radley) seems to forget that the real nasty encroachment on the 4th Amendment was Slick Willy’s.

Divadab, I’d have to put a few facts in the way of your argument, but:

The S&L crisis was a result of government regulation which increased FDIC to $100,000 per depositor, making the S&L higher-ups take riskier investments and rob the money vaults. Had the government kept the number at $40,000 or never gotten involved in the first place, depositors would be more attentive to and hold their banks more responsible. (At least that’s my understanding of how it went down.) At the end of the day, when evaluating the two major forces in America, I’m more confident in corporations that I am in government.

“The US Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of several savings and loan associations in the United States. More than 1,000 savings and loan institutions (S&Ls) failed in “the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time.”[1] The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD$160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government [2], which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s. The resulting taxpayer bailout ended up being even larger than it would have been because moral hazard and adverse-selection incentives compounded the system’s losses. [3]”

“The United States Congress granted all thrifts in 1980, including savings and loan associations, the power to make consumer and commercial loans and to issue transaction accounts. Designed to help the thrift industry retain its deposit base and to improve its profitability, the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA) of 1980 allowed thrifts to make consumer loans up to 20 percent of their assets, issue credit cards, accept negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts from individuals and nonprofit organizations, and invest up to 20 percent of their assets in commercial real estate loans.

The damage to S&L operations led Congress to act, passing a bill in September 1981[8] allowing S&Ls to sell their mortgage loans and use the cash generated to seek better returns; the losses created by the sales were to be amortized over the life of the loan, and any losses could also be offset against taxes paid over the preceding 10 years. This all made S&Ls eager to sell their loans. The buyers – major Wall Street firms – were quick to take advantage of the S&Ls’ lack of expertise, buying at 60%-90% of value and then transforming the loans by bundling them as, effectively, government-backed bonds (by virtue of Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Fannie Mae guarantees). S&Ls were one group buying these bonds, holding $150 billion by 1986, and being charged substantial fees for the transactions.

In 1982, the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act was passed and increased the proportion of assets that thrifts could hold in consumer and commercial real estate loans and allowed thrifts to invest 5 percent of their assets in commercial loans until January 1, 1984, when this percentage increased to 10 percent [9].

A large number of S&L customers’ defaults and bankruptcies ensued, and the S&Ls that had overextended themselves were forced into insolvency proceedings themselves.

The U.S. government agency Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), which at the time insured S&L accounts in the same way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures commercial bank accounts, then had to repay all the depositors whose money was lost. From 1986 to 1989, FSLIC closed or otherwise resolved 296 institutions with total assets of $125 billion. An even more traumatic period followed, with the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation in 1989 and that agency’s resolution by mid-1995 of an additional 747 thrifts. [10]”

If the above is not a direct result of Reagan Republican greed and deregulation, I don;t know what is.

The above describes both the Nazi Party, and the Bush Republican Party. Both are fascist in outlook – Bush has just not been as successful in executing his strategy as Hitler was. And even Hitler didn’t jail as many people as the United States does as a proportion of population.